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Denise Meyer is an Accounts Payable Staff Accountant at Voltus, a demand response and distributed energy resource management company. Before joining Voltus, she spent more than two decades in Credit Control (Debtors Control), giving her a rare perspective from both sides of the transaction.
In this conversation, she reflects on how that experience has shaped her approach to vendor relationships, process improvement, and automation.
A Natural Affinity for Structure
Nick Levine: What first led you to seek out a career in accounting and finance?
Denise Meyer: Looking back at my school days, there was definitely an element of intention there. Accounting is structured: you have a defined set of tasks, you have to execute them in a specific way, and there is a clear, measurable outcome. Even back then, my personality thrived on that kind of structure. I really enjoyed the process of following a methodology sequentially from step one to step ten.
Learning on the Job: Two Decades at Nashua
Nick Levine: After high school, you spent over two decades in credit control, including 21 years at Nashua North East, a franchise offering office automation, connectivity, security, and energy solutions. What did the long tenure teach you?
Denise Meyer: Credit control is a critical, often downplayed role because you are tasked with collecting money from customers while simultaneously keeping them happy. You have to work within company boundaries while balancing both sides of the relationship. I’ve always said that as a credit controller, you are effectively a salesperson; you have to find that fine line where you keep both the customer and your own company satisfied.
Nick Levine: Managing relationships to secure payments sounds like a delicate balance. How did you develop the communication skills required for that environment?
Denise Meyer: You learn those soft skills through pure experience and doing the job for several years. If you work with a specific batch of customers long enough, you pick up on their cues and behavioral trends. Eventually, you start to recognize patterns in how different customers tend to pay and accommodate them accordingly in line with company policy.
The Flip Side: Embracing the Accounts Payable Perspective
Nick Levine: After your long and successful tenure in collections, you made a major shift to the other side of the ledger in 2021. What inspired you to pivot into accounts payable?
Denise Meyer: When I left Nashua and started looking for a change, I realized I had reached my ceiling in credit control. I wondered, “What’s next?” The natural progression was to move to the other side of the coin: accounts payable. It felt like a very organic shift because you are already so familiar with what is expected of a credit controller. You suddenly possess the other half of the puzzle—you’re just operating on the opposite side of the transaction.
Nick Levine: Coming from a traditional corporate background, how did you find adjusting to a company with a completely different model like Voltus?
Denise Meyer: It was fascinating to learn about a whole new industry. Voltus is a demand response/distributed energy resource management platform that coordinates and monetizes load reductions, like a heatwave straining supply. That collective reduction across many customers takes pressure off the whole system, helping prevent the kind of overload that leads to blackouts, and the customers who cut back get paid for it.
Nick Levine: Having mastered both sides of the transactional cycle, how has your history in collections shaped how you approach your relationships with vendors today at Voltus?
Denise Meyer: Having been on the other side, I’m deeply sympathetic to what vendors are going through. Payment requests follow from contractual duties and responsibilities. I know our vendors have cash flow targets, collection goals, and internal stakeholders to report to. You have to see the bigger picture and recognize that they are under pressure. Layering a personal touch of understanding and communication into our processes makes a world of difference.
Unlocking Operational Agility with Workflow Customizations
Nick Levine: A central theme for Next Gen Finance is driving efficiency through technology. Could you share an example of a process you’ve automated or streamlined at Voltus using Tipalti?
Denise Meyer: We have independent electrical contractors who install our devices for on-site metering. The contractors are spread across the US and Canada. The individual projects generate volumes of billings to Voltus, and the workflow needs to be efficient between our organization, our vendor, and contractors. The flow starts at the project level, then moves to implementation, billing, and payments.
Nick Levine: How exactly did you re-engineer that workflow to make it more seamless?
Denise Meyer: Each project has a specific flow, from creation to final payment, and is generated in our ERP with a nominated project name. That name holds the key to the workflow and ties in all aspects of the project’s status. From an AP perspective, Tipalti facilitates the flow. Personalized custom field entries are generated in both Tipalti API (billing processing) and Tipalti Procurement (purchase orders). The stakeholders (internal team) carry the project name through each platform we use, with each request, update, and payment. The result is efficiency, accuracy, and seamless reporting.
Nick Levine: What kind of impact has that custom connectivity had on your broader accounting operations and reporting efficiency?
Denise Meyer: It has been completely seamless. When we pull an operational report, GL review, or payment summary, we can search the project name and instantly find it across the PO and bill processing stages. It has given us immense visibility and eliminated a massive amount of manual reconciliation. Having that specific, tailored field pop up as a clean column in our reporting has been an absolute game-changer.
If you’ve enjoyed Denise’s story of bridging both sides of the transaction to drive empathy and automation, check out the rest of our Next Gen Finance Leaders series.
